tuesday

i feel good
i feel good
what a strange week already,
i feel good. 

:)

monday

it is monday.
mom has chemo at noon.
i have a meeting at 10, maybe 10:30, i'll check.
i am tired already. 
this is all i presently know about today. 
here's hoping there's more to it. 

hello. hello silent hello.

it's dark here. where i am, it's dark.   and, i don't want to be here,   and i don't know how to be anywhere else. i am scared. i am exhausted by my lack of creativity, and i am scared by the fewness of solutions. 

a million years ago, mar said "maybe you should write. like journal or something, help you deal with it". and i did. and for the longest time it helped. until, i was scared by what i was saying.  and now i'm scared of what i'm not saying. all the things i am not saying. and all the things i am scared to not say. and the problem is all the in-betweens. and how sometimes, randomest things make me really emotional. like a children's choir singing bjork, and their faces which made me almost cry. (this)

* * * 

i am not a robot. this is scary, because i am not a human. i am petulant and thrashy. i do not know the rules this creature abides by, but they are not mine. i did not set them, i do not control this thing. it moves so slowly, but it is soo large. i walk besides it. measuring it. reckoning it. i occasionally stand before it and try to stop it, pointlessly. 

p = mv. 

momentum is mass x velocity. 

this thing moves slow, but lordie it's size. decade+ of growing. i've never seen a tumour so empowered. slurping it's way down the street to work. typing. talking. returning home. ensuring nothing is pleasured in-between. 

* * * 

what the f*ck am i saying. am i actually saying? am i actually... hello? q? are you in there? are you anywhere? help me, there were parts of you i didn't hate. once-upon-a-time, the world was hard but you were okay, you were all i had. 

i... do i not have even you now? do you know how small that makes me feel? 

* * * 

do you know how much time i have spent thinking about it?  - about how to get home from here? this is that movie. the shipwrecked castaway, the lost-in-space thriller.  how did i spool out so far?  i swear i don't know. i promise.  but i am gone.  my brain is weird. i am so f*cking weird. 

* * *

do you understand how hard it is to want nothing, and to walk home from there? to understand that's not the right answer but i don't know which turn was the wrong one. the labryinth. the minotaur. the in-between. 

i tried robotocism. it worked, until i was an alcoholic. - so that can't have worked. 

i tried, whatever the opposite of that iswas, but i kept crying for no reason. often at train stations which is somewhat inconvenient. 

for once, is there a middle? does a pendulum actually ever stop? 40 years - does it ever stop? ever? 

i am ashamed not to know. 

i hate not knowing. 

so i have returned to the last silent place i was happy screaming into. hurling myself into hoping never to return. the anachronistic, boomerville, darkzone of the internet. i am halfway-sure this isn't even a thing anymore. but i don't want to turn on the lights and my notebooks are packed away and pens are scary, a daytime utensil and i have a situation involing nightime monsters. 

* * * 

i thought i'd have killed myself by now.  but,  i didn't. 

fine. ok. we'll live with that. 

the last of me struggles for breath. 

and i need it to grow more of me, because... 

nothing grows here. 

it is dark. 
and, 

i am scared and tired. 

and i now know: 

it's damn hard to get a ride home.

shhh

 imagine i did it. 

imagine i did.

that thing, 

sat in the silence and conceived myself

said said what i felt - worse still - felt it

these are sharp words. sharp and... 

* * * 

why i have i lived this soo long?

will it must it go on? but, but like this ?

this ?

* * *

he asks me - I spoke the psychiatrist today - god bless phone appointments - he asks me how i am - things are good, ups and downs, been on this ride a long time doc, get to know the bumpy parts pretty well. 

sure thing, sure thing. well, you're still managing on 6 a day? - yup, same as always (more like 16

and nothing out of the ordinary? - nothing new, same ol same ol (twitching everywhere, add half a dozen caffeine pills, whatever else i can find, hypnic jerks are no fun, the twitch, the worst are the sores on the sores on the tongue, the strange lights and thinking all the shadows move

great. glad you're doing well. - eh. life. who knows right? win some, lose most. but, a win here and there, should be enough. 

very realistic. - i'm nothing if not accustomed to reality. 

what is reality? - a year ago you told me you couldn't cure existential angst, remember? 

yah yah - so why bother right?  - that's what i say, just. why. bother. 

* *  * 

and. yet. 

time goes its way. and you go yours. and mine?,   Mine? 

well. 

mine, it sinks deep.and, it will never be clear, i am smart man i will never understand it

just why it's so goddam imperative to the alien in my brain that it destroys me. that it does such a god-freaking-damn good job of it

and whether in the end, when i'm diced up on the scale, we'll know then, we'll know, on the scale, diced up, half a pound of flesh and a slowy broken cracked dreamer's pie of a heart, will i know whether i tried and fought,

or. 

not.

* *  *

for so long i have tried not to think. not to feel. what good can come of this? what good comes of putting this out in the world? 

i've been watching youtube. apparently repressed emotions are not such a good thing. substance abuse, constant distraction. sleep problems. disturbances of various types. check check check check. 

but here... 

no one's here anymore. the world has moved on from this space. perhaps here, it's time to re-imagine. re-enliven. 

let's be clear, i'm here to try and remember why it's okay to be alive and who knows and certainly not me i can't remember ever knowing. i'm nearly 40.that's a bruise i'll face another day. 

dear lord help me. 

iust. 

i've run out of prayers lord. i'm trying and it's not going great. 

do what you do. 

it's what it is. 

i hate this carousel. 

bye.

she says

she says i don't understand it. i don't understand people who drink so much -
i don't understand people who don't - [he says]
___- i open something and it smells horrible and if i touch it it takes months to get through. 

so, then he says: remember how you forbid me from dying? [yes, she remembers] imagine feeling - i can't. i can't have this evening/afternoon/moment. i just can't endure it. it's too much i want to turn it off and i want it to stop and i want a repeat later. a fresh chance at it - [she nods] - so that's this. i can't be dead because your forbidding me.. it, dead forever, but i can die tonight. die and shut the whole machine off and it be quiet and thought-less and when i wake... i'll try again. the world will be anew. another chance. 
she's quiet. __ a little longer, then: that sounds horrible. 
- It is horrible. It's not fun, it's horrible. It's a death every night, that's a lot of casualties but they're little bite sized suicides. enough i can chew on without causing too big a mess. 
She responds immediately don't you go making a bigger mess than you're already making;- already made,  ... and making. .

Now he's quiet. So she adds a finishing touch: it sounds horrible though. I'm real sorry. 

* * *

and then they go on to talk about other things. with relief.
and it's sunny.
and the air is nice.
and tomorrow it's a day anew.

oh.

shhh.

THINGS I CANNOT SAY (OUTLOUD) (TO ANYONE) or think

i... just need a pit-dark moment of honesty. just to record the things. for later, for later when it's different and it's a new everything and we've started over - when that all comes i want to be able to remember honestly. need to put a flag down. or bread crumbs. 

1. most of 2018, parts of 2019, you were scared of the edge. at the train station. you kept yourself seated until the train was fully stopped. then you stood up, walked in. doors closed. don't take risks with yourself. it only takes a second to swoon your way towards
2. you still think about it. when you walk to work. when you leave work early because you just can't, and you walk around aimless hoping to see something you haven't seen, you day dream about it. always the same. coming to the train tracks. lying down. head on the track so comfortably, a cloud made of pillows. sweet sweet silent sleep. a sleep with no dreams (at last). why this over and over again? 
3. and every night how worried you are to go home. how unsure you are what to do when you're there. how scared you are of the place. on fridays, the day the cleaner comes, you walk around, trying to follow her steps and see what's changed. relieved to see dust you remember. the dead you. disassociated you. lost you. how will you put it all back together again? how will you remember what you were when you weren't this far away? the dust must know. the dust must. the dust. if not, nothing. 
4. never have you drunk like this. 2019 this is. wake at 9, drink before brushing your teeth. drunk before 10. asleep before 11. awake in the pm, repeat. repeat. repeat. not another day of it. not another day i won't tolerate another single moment single second single any of tod
5. when i was 16 i wrote the last line of the novel. even then, i knew even then how it'd end. i had no idea what the story was, who it was about, how it'd look. i just knew how it'd end. i could visualize it. i saw it. that's the only intuition i've ever had. "I listen to french music i don't understand, and dance like a fiend at an OD funeral".  so it goes. 

What else? what else? be honest q. be honest. no one cares. just be honest. say it. force yourself. say it. effing say it because it's the last chance you have to exist as something other than a pot plant broken robot no one's ever heard silent radio alarm clock f*cking dust heave version of u. please q say something.

1. you haven't gone back to playing philip glass since her. you can't. it's her. it's her. 
2. autumn leaves is her song you can't listen to that either. you stopped playing that months ago you never will ever again. 
3. you know her routes you haven't been anywhere near her side of the block. maybe she's seen me around dear god thank you i haven't seen her. i just can't. i just can't. 
4. maybe i'll be forgiven one day. (by who?)
5. maybe someone will forgive me some day. some day some bum will walk up to me and unsolicited say "hey dude. you're forgiven." and i'll cry and cry and he'll say something about jesus and i'll say something about how i managed 2019 without knowing what impact with a train feels like. maybe. don't jinx it, there's still time. maybe. maybemaybe.

what am i forgetting? what am i dodging?

1. the psychologist. Pam. call her Pam. she suggested you see her. when you passed the exam and were supposed to be happy but instead, who the f*ck knows why, you were the exact opposite and couldn't stop it it was so heavy it was so heavy it was so much you couldn't and the nightmares started and never have you had more nightmares than with her besides you snoring (which you didn't mind the snoring) but the dreams and every night waking up screaming or her waking you because you'd been screaming and thrashing and covered in sweat and ashamed to talk about it and the effing useless pyschologist call her Pam remember that f*cking saga she suggested it might help and even the psychiatrist said bro it might help - remember that
2. why are you doing this? why are you doing this? 
3. i don't want to do this. 
4. i just don't. 

i just don't.

1. i'm scared of myself. 
2. something's gone out from it. it's lighter than i remember, someone poured it all out. 
3. it's... hard to explain. it's __i... 
4. here it is: as long as mom and sahar are alive, so am i. imagine if they weren't. if they weren't, and it's just what today's worth to you, imagine that, imagine you have to weigh your own day and that's what you're measuring what do you think then? __not sure you make it lunch. 

how is this what you wrote? you're doing well. you've been having dinners with people. you shave everyday. you get dressed everyday. you go to work. you're doing so well. you've even started walking around again. sometimes going to gym. you made those 4 jokes last week. that's an improvement. how can you write this? you wrote this?


i.
i..

tried. am trying. will try.

that's all

notapoem - on the occasion of resitting an exam

pt 1 - monday 25 Feb, 1:01am

__this ferocious month,
__the mouth
__of 2019 -
_and now,
_the hour I have been too
_scared of to be scared.
(so I've just... not been.
__out of fright for today I haven't dared to be scared.)
Pill count today: 16.
that can't last. __I'm sorry future me. __I'm sorry
previous me for getting us into this mess.
__But here we are.
_too scared for feelings and very very tired.
__So too everything


pt 2 - Saturday 2 March, 2:44pm

__and now i see why.
__around the corner, __beneath the
__the unknown places speak ,
__a certain language
__with no question marks.
__the ipse dixit of how it goes
__how it went
__what was left __lost __redeemed, ____displaced
__the fall of rome __the day Luna Park was closed
__lost tennis balls __rings
__broken dishes __bones
__success stories __fours of spades
__who sunk and who found a treasure ashore.

__shrugs against tanks

__steps __against  days and days and days:
__sometimes against, __sometimes through, __sometimes
under the foot of.

__now we wait.
__hearts at our feet.

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE HUNDREDS OF BUTTERFLIES I SEE FROM MY OFFICE ON THE 40th FLOOR WHILE BEGRUDGINGLY WORKING ON A SUNNY SUNDAY

the dust has settled, and we walk through what's left with relief that we are walking and part of what's left

snow, in reverse, floating away from the earth, warming us as it rises

somewhere a mother is so proud

(two dance right by my window) hello friends hello be-my-friends hello i know-you-are 

we should all dance as loosely. ignore the choreography, our steps are light as air

are you here to remind me of something?

the hourglass is running in reverse, the grains trickle upwards. each one i am delighted to see and sorry to see gone, not to return again. (where will you all go? where will you all sleep?

not everything that rises returns. say hi to the balloons for me.


* * *

thank you lordie, i needed something beautiful today

Los Angeles, and everything after

this is not special fancy writing i don't have special fancy writing, all i have are - i don't know what i even have i should be more thankful grateful for all the wonderfulness but i can't i tried i couldn't i tried i tried i tried - not a single time has the plane landed and i thought hurray!, not a single once, not a single once, every time the wheels touch down and there's that sinking falling something really sinks down low and i feel crushed ruined hurt    i mean that: hurt,   and then i walk around for days thinking why here why how did, what is this place who am i here?, i'm no one here, not even my mom is here any more, i miss my mom, why is everyone i love somewhere else somewhere far from me and i am thankful for all these wonderful lovelies i spent a lifetime finding discovering and why am i not near them, but here, in this place, by myself where i have nothing to do but drink night after night hoping the night just goes away,   dear 2016 seriously f8ck off i hate you hate you hate you, what more disaster can you devise you f8cker of a year i hate you hate you hate you - this is a salty month of a salty year i have no answers why can't i answer this i don't know how to fix this who can i speak to to help me escape this?, who why can't i find a way out of this maze at the end of the universe where i've been trapped for millennia where every day is a week, every week a universe and where i've been reduced to a silent mouse in a quiet office where i read the thing and write the thing and have nothing to show for it on friday evening but another 80 hours clocked wasted spilt and empty bottles i look through and find nothing but a hazier tonight tomorrow forever i swear i am trying - i am failing but i am trying and i don't know how what i'm supposed to do, i don't know what i'm supposed to do i don't know what i'm supposed to do, dear tuesday dear monday dear all you days i want you to be here with me, i want to see you why can't i see?

i am out of boxes to put you in.

put me in the box already i am out of flowers.

why can't i fix this  i don't know how to fix this   who can i speak to to help me escape this? 

2016: a portrait (draft)

half-nelson
the muscular shadow:
__mountains of heavy-weighted silence

___*

near tears when i arrive home
scared of the front door
frozen on the porch in the dark, still holding my keys
__hoping the stray cat will visit

__
___*

you were sober all week?, that's great! that's great, And last night too,
oh.
...
___...

___*

this straight road.
this tired sunday,
yet another fallen to my feet, with the other playing cards

even the shingles doesn't scratch,
in the shape of a perverse smile
licks its lips and presses its fang into me

hi sucker

___*

this finger is fine, i can move it.
the finger is swollen, dislocated and fractured.
i can move it.
you cannot.
but i see it moving.
you do not.

___*

half-nelson
the breathlessness
the herbs for the anxiety
the pills for the cold bed
the medication for the frenzy
the booze for everything else

___*

it's true isn't it?

i am here?

am i?

please
_please ,



is there no bottom?

(the carousel. the merry-go-round,

hamsters on a wheel. rats in race).

___*

there's a voice on the other end.
far away.
it keeps me walking.
i keep pace to it.
if it stops i stop.
tomorrow it may be there again.
tomorrow maybe i will be.

___*

2016:
the year of the half-nelson,
the choke-hold
breathlessness : the year of the motionless frenzy
the sunken cathedral
the bottomless piano,
the monday vampire
the tuesday drone
these white tulips
these cigarettes won't light
these pills won't speak
no exit
no stronghold
the muscular shadow, with its mountainous weight:
the year of the gridlock,
the lost birth certificate
the half empty tumbler
the empty bottle
the year of the



is there no bottom?



___please :


______is there no bottom? 

sunday, 3:55pm

when did this start?,
before the long weekend with the perfect weather
and the steady, controlled pace of moderating
immoderate rage with whatever was at hand,
stumbling hands under the couch and under the sink
looking for things to throw at it,

numberless day, nameless moments

left hand still shrieking from a bad catch last week,
swollen thumb shaking its way through untied shoelaces on one foot
undone cuffs on on wrist

despite all efforts : aimless day,
gentle, smiling sunny minutes gnawing away,
eroding the last of it

and with nothing left at 4pm
the day yawns and the real trouble will begin.

how , how , how? , to deal with that?

(if i start burning now, by tuesday morning...



how?

saturday, 9:12

he plays videogames and taps his feet to the blaring trance
i read ee cummings and listen to my body fill and release like a giant heart

and he tries the nanoblocks again
and i look for poems about kisses and consider sending them to you

the clothes dryer turns
it's the bats' mating season and they have a lot to say about it outside ;
saturday night doesn't notice any of this as it casually inspects itself

(and grainy seconds coalesce into minutes hours longweekends nexybirthdays and
___a wave called Time grows into a wall )

___and i drink and do another line and read
and shutout the doppler effect
and try to find a shortcut to the other side

2016: a portrait

i.
- its muscular shadow - don't you sense it?, like we're all pinned in a half-nelson we can't see?


ii.
well i haven't seen a turn-off in a little while now, and, well, frankly, i'm a bit concerned - see, we've been going for a while now and it's just straight and there's no way off this highway and it's not coming to anything and it's getting us further-on and i haven't seen a thing worth looking at in miles and hours


iii.
she crosses the street when i get home.
and sits on the porch with me.
and listens out for cars in the distance, and scratches her ears
while i wait for my breathing to slow.


iv.
there's no capacity for description anymore, this implicates the possibility of a numbness so generalised that experience is negated - not felt, not understood, it can't be described - a nerveless heaven full of cinder blocks and tuesday mornings and tired flowers we're too tired to throw out when we arrive home at midnight and leave again 5 hours later.


v.
How to Pin Butterflies: a Guide
14 steps to easy pinning


vi.
- Q, are you bored, i'm concerned you might be bored -
- huh?
- i can sense it, you get... tired, a little different, from time to time, i think it's when you're bored,
- [...]
- ________and we all get it, you're an intellectual powerhouse, and we want you here and we want to make sure we're giving you enough to feel stimulated, _______ ;
- [...]

___*___ *___ *

- and have you thought about your next 12 months?
- Yes.
- [...]
- .
- [...]
- .
- mm. Well, I guess that brings us to....


vii.
- hey so you know that stray cat?
- Kitty.
- ___yes, her name isn't Kitty
- _____________________yes it is.
- it's not, she belongs to the people across the street, she's theirs.
- her name is Kitty.
- we can't adopt her Q.
- but they don't look after her very well


viii. 
do you want to half a gram with-
______________________-Absolutely.


xi.
i awake on the couch shivering with a dark grey patch across the chest where half a glass of bourbon has absorbed into my shirt
3am
i throw it in the laundry, turn off the lights, set the alarm to give me 2 more hours, and
stop in the doorway to look at the dark bed

mikrokosmos

it rains loudly
it relieves me
works the knots out of my muscles and hot breath

Mon 6 Jul 12:56am

On my way to - but not quite yet - being thoroughly boozed, still exhausted in my bones, and not ready to retire that exhaustion: these first words I've written in months and months: 'hello!', I greet them: 'welcome!', signs from myself. a weather report from the farthest darkest place: 'what's news from HQ?' // and mostly sad - a week or two more it'd all have come together, all the stars would like up and I'd see their secrets, the invisible things that hold them in place and the invisible things that turn them and I'd leave here a champion - the winner of hunger-games, the most standing-est gladiator. As it is I leave in a whisper of mediocrity: another kid who's top of the list somewhere else but here populates the T-curve: the T-curve is hungry. that hump doesn't fill itself [gasp - as he sips]: "I'm sorry to be smoking again" she says, "I really thought I' be able to hold out" she says, as she stares at her cigarette, the guy besides her puffs some smoke and agrees, they look at me expectantly... "so what's the secret in your room? you spend enough time in it". i just smirk "you can't count the dead bodies I've hidden. I shed glass bottles like dragons' scales. open a drawer shelf cabinet glass bones tumble out: lost imaginary things you can look straight through and find magic lost kingdoms on the other side, how much I wish I could sleep through the whole night" his voice trails off at the end: // "hey" she says, he grumbles "I didn't sleep very well babs", "I know" she says "you pushed me and turned over all night -" "-I'm soz" "-I know I know, and you mumbled about intangibles and and Locke and nemerus claws-" "-clausus-" "-what?" "numerus clausus" "that. all night." how sad. exams a week done and still the ghosts of property-theory and un-perfectly-planned essays chase my supine shadow to the ends of sunrise. as I clutch my pillows and sweat into my sheets. // "what's so scary about mediocrity?" I'm just me I guess. That's the scary thing - that I am no more than myself. We aspire to be such great many huge things. But we're just... Q. just plain, old Q. "Is that not enough?" "Who knows. What's that Q-guy one anyway?" // at night the bugs are anxious to get into my room and buzz around. For weeks I'd wait until 2am before closing the windows and taking a 10 minute break to chase the shadows and shatter their limbs against the wall. Tissue after tissue full of corpses. I'd smash soo hard my wrists would hurt and then I'd sit at my desk, stuffy motionless light, sip at my sleep-nectar-bourbon and mourn all the life that I'd taken. The sanctity that I'd deprived the world of. Then I'd lean forward and try to force-feed another few paragraphs into my brain. Maybe orange-juice, maybe vitamin C will open a few more neurons to retain things. And keep sipping. About 3am is a good time to stop. Strawberry pop-tarts (because they are always cheapest at the store, otherwise I prefer blueberry) to console me. eyedrops to help the stinging eyes while I wait. no excuse for the mane of hair. terrified by the black bags hanging around. the stumbled walk. the strange senselessness: confused between hot-and-cold, excitement-and-fatigue, hungry-and-full - lost between chapters and books and terrified that if my wrist seises up this week how will i write the exams? seisin: the entitlement to be put into possession of land - ownership and possession, conceptually mixed at English common law from the beginning. to hold and to have. Now I know that those two ideas are not the same. "you pushed me" she says "so I stroked your head." "What did I do?" "Nothing, you shook your head and then crawled into my chest". it is quiet there I want to say. there are no distractions there i want to say. (there is no [__] future there I want to say.) // it's been months; that's a good thing. it's best if i'm as far away from you as possible, you do horrible things to me; but I really want to know: are you a harmonica virtuoso yet? that's all I want to know // "- I know what you mean, what a beautiful line; there's that Ted Hughes line - do you know it it's similar?" (i don't) "oh. it's: this house has been far out at sea all night "

RUN ORESTES, RUN

this is not a backbone (i don't have a backbone (yet))

Carrie & Lowell at 2am (has Sufjan ever been better?)

sometimes - it usually happens after midnight - i stop reading and sit and listen to music and draw and drink until i'm sleepy.

dear sufjan: thanks for sharing your whispered monster.

going.

... 

RUNNIN' THROUGH DA AISLES WIT MY WOES